In restaurants and other food service establishments there is a need to process food uniformly, to maintain cooked food items at an appropriate and safe temperature and to serve fresh food items quickly to customers. This is particularly the case in quick service restaurants, where customers expect to receive their food with a minimum delay. Of course, customers also expect the food to be of consistent high quality and served at the appropriate temperature. The rate of customer demand typically varies at different times of day, with some periods such as lunch having extremely high rates of demand. In order to meet peak demand and provide quick service, certain food items must be precooked and stored under conditions suitable to preserve freshness and safety and maintain the food items at the appropriate temperature for service.
Typical foods of interest in quick service restaurants include sandwiches composed of a bun, roll or other bakery-cooked bread product and a sandwich filling that is cooked on site at the quick service restaurant. Typical sandwich fillings include hamburger patties, grilled or breaded and fried chicken patties or filets, breaded fish filets, sausage patties, bacon, Canadian bacon and eggs. The restaurant may also offer products other than sandwiches, such as French fries, chicken strips and nuggets, and individual pies.
To provide both quick service and food with a fresh taste and appearance, it is often desirable to cook a quantity of individual food items such as sandwich fillings, store them in a holding area, and incorporate them on a first-in, first-out basis into individual sandwiches as orders are placed. To ensure consistent quality, the cooking and preparation processes must be performed uniformly and, if food items in the holding area are not sold prior to the expiration of a preset period of time, they are discarded. Because of the high volume of sales in a typical quick service restaurant, even a small increase in the efficiency of the handling of cooked food items, and a small decrease in the number of food items which must be discarded, can result in considerable savings of time and expense.
A need exists for a system and method that can automatically monitor the types and quantities of food items that have been cooked and are in the holding area at any given time, can alert restaurant personnel when the inventory of a particular item is nearing exhaustion and that more of such items should be cooked, and can alert personnel when food items in the holding area must be discarded. It would be desirable for the system to manage food items in the holding area so that they are utilized on a first-in, first out basis, and to manage movable trays of cooked food no matter where they are located in the facility.